The next installment of the monthly methods-focused webinar series hosted by the National Center for CryoEM Access and Training (NCCAT), the Pacific Northwest Center for CryoEM (PNCC), and the Stanford-SLAC CryoEM Center (S2C2) will be held on
Thursday December 9, 2021 at 12 PM eastern / 9 AM pacific time
Tarjani Thaker PhD, Scientist in the Tomasiak Lab at the University of Arizona will present
Determining structural mechanisms of allosteric regulation in ABCC family transporters using a remote cryo-EM pipeline
Talk Abstract: The democratization of cryo‐EM has rapidly advanced thanks to the emergence of cryo‐EM centers, making it possible for institutions lacking the infrastructure to pursue structural investigations by cryo‐EM. Using the tools and expertise available at PNCC, our group at the University of Arizona has been able to successfully employ cryo‐EM for structural studies on ABCC family transporters, in the process establishing an almost entirely remote pipeline for determining high‐ resolution structures. In this talk, I will share the strategies we have taken to build an efficient workflow that maximizes center resources to advance our understanding of the structure/function relationships in the allosteric regulation of ABC transporters. Our structures shed light on the role of post‐translational modifications and lipid‐like substrates in the functional regulation of dynamic and flexible membrane proteins involved in oxidative stress and multi‐drug resistance which I will also present in this webinar, with an emphasis on data processing strategies used together with orthogonal tools to cross‐validate our findings.